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Hello, and welcome to another edition of the CxO newsletter.
Though International Women’s Day was declared an official day of observance by the United Nations in 1977, it can be traced to 1908, when 15,000 women took to the streets of New York City, marching for fair pay, better working hours and the right to vote. But if you don’t recall having heard all that much about IWD until relatively recently, you’re not alone. In fact, it wasn’t until 2017—when the organizers of the International Women’s Strike and that year’s Women’s March teamed up to protest Trump-era policies with “A Day Without Women” on March 8—that it made many waves. In the five years since, brands have increasingly jumped on the bandwagon.
As Lindsay Seyman, president of New York-based ad agency Fancy, told ForbesWomen’s Maggie McGrath last year, “It’s almost become something that we have to do. We’re planning for it in a different way than I think I ever have in my career,” comparing marketing strategies for IWD to those for Valentine’s Day or Halloween. And consumers can tell: As Maggie wrote in her 2021 piece “What One Women’s Editor Hates About International Women’s Day,” “this deluge of brands messaging around ‘women’s empowerment’ is ringing a bit hollow,” referencing the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on women.
One year later, the situation isn’t much improved: Though women’s labor force participation has edged up to 58% from its pandemic-era low of 57.2%, it’s well below February 2020’s 59.2%, per the Labor Department. And according to a ManpowerGroup survey of 39,000 employers in 40 countries released this morning, though 86% of companies say they’re measuring gender parity progress, just 25% are focused on increasing female representation in leadership.
But it’s not all doom and gloom: I recently spoke with Sandra Matz, the David W. Zalaznick associate professor of business at Columbia Business School, and M. Asher Lawson, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, whose latest research shows how appointing women to leadership positions can change corporate culture. An analysis of 1.23 billion words from 43,396 documents (think, 10-K filings and earnings transcripts) found that organizations with female CEOs use language that more closely associates women with traditional leadership traits (ambition, confidence and decisiveness, to name a few).
“The companies are discussing women in a way that sees them aligned with being leaders and signals to every member of the organization that this is how they’re thinking of women and leaders as one,” Lawson tells me. “As you appoint women to leadership positions, essentially you change the way stereotypes are expressed in language, and by doing so you change the organizational culture in the way women are embraced,” Matz adds. And this paves the way for more women to rise.
Forbes is marking this IWD by helping women do just that, convening members of our 30 Under 30 and 50 Over 50 communities for our first-ever 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi. Dedicated to cross-generational mentoring, the event has so far featured conversations with Cathie Wood, founder of ARK Investment Management, Yuliya Tychkivska, executive director of the Aspen Institute Kyiv, and Hillary Clinton, among many others.
The event comes as we call for nominations for our 2022 50 Over 50 list, spotlighting women who’ve shown success knows no age. We’re searching for the next Julie Wainwright—the head of Pets.com at the height of the dot-com bubble, who at 53 started over, founding luxury online consignment retailer The RealReal—and Bettie Parker—a North Carolina math teacher, who after a 33-year career became her city’s first female mayor at the age of 69. If these stories remind you of someone you know—or yourself—submit your nomination today.
Thank you for reading, and feel free to share your ideas with me at vvalet@forbes.com.
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